Another site looking like it wants to capitalize on the success of Places like cute overload is Rippin kitten.
On a related note, here's the Uncyblopedia entry for Steve Ballmer.
Bwahahahahaahahah!
Cool video of the latest Windows vulnerability, affecting Vista, XP, 2003 and others due to Animated cursors. The Microsoft advisory is here. The result is a crash-reload loop of explorer crashing, restarting itself, crashing, restarting itself, et infinitum.
What's really scary is that it doesn't seem to be affected by UAC or any of the new security precautions. It does still require the specially crafted ".ani" file to get onto the local system, but these days that still isn't that hard I don't think. Hey, it's just an animated cursor, right? :) This is 0-day because it's apparently been seen in the wild.... Slashdot flamefest here.
Of course, who uses animated cursors anymore. Most likely this will only hit 12 year old girls installing my little pony cursor sets.
Compare the sizes of anything in the universe with Universcale. Good to see your place in things..... Nifty and addicting little app, similar in time suck to something like Google Earth. Hint: use the mouse scroll, took me a bit to figure that out.
Evolution, the Open Source Mail client is now available for windows.
Evolution features virtual folders, advanced filtering, spam filtering, security, calendar, todo list and contact management, Exchange support, signing mail with S/MIME / GPG / PGP, and syncing with palm pilots.
This should be very exciting for people who are stuck having to use Exchange / Outlook (through either choice or decree from The Bo$$tm) and are looking for an alternative to some of the less-than-perfectness that is MS Outlook.
A quick test here shows it's far from perfect. Default window layouts are odd (you have to turn on status bars, sidebars, and toolbars), and it took a bit of finagelling to just get to my exchange mail, which then wouldn't load. A bit disappointing, but there is definate promise there, and there's still a decent pop/imap client there. Anyone else played with Exchange with this new Evolution?
Holy crap! Check out the video of a a Dodge Viper doing 220 MPH in 24.1 sec. I just love the sound as he pegs each gear.
A nice zoomable view of the Google Master Plan whiteboard. Some real gems in there if you want to look deep. Included are turning TCP/IP pink, attaining total information awareness, blowing up parliament, weather control, orbital mind control and something involving a legion of midgets. Or is it minions? Hilarious!
Neat comparison of All (known) Bodies in the Solar System Larger than 200 Miles in Diameter. Is it just me or is the third from last one the death star?
Wow, forever geek found the Best. Transformers Costumes. Ever.. These guys have some a) serious time on their hands and b) serious nerd issues. Seriously, there has to be a pill or something you can take.
Combine high speed video and a samurai sword and what do you get? Sup er cool videos. Amazing how cleanly that thing slices.
Funny trailer for "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry", the latest from Adam Sandler and friends. Looks potentially funny, not sure how offensive it is or isn't to straight or gay couples. I at least giggled at it.
This joke was posted on the Ubuntu-UK mailing list and is apparently subject of controversy due to the fact it could be offensive. Personally I found it funny, but hey, whatever.
Sometimes you can know how the day is going to go from those first few items on Digg and Reddit. Today two items are brought to you from JWZ, the second two from Metro.co.uk.
There are two new quizes on Battlestar Galactica site, one on Cylons and one on Starbuck. 10 out of 10 and 8 out of 10 respectively. Who can beat my awesomeness? :)
Forgetfoo found a couple of great videos on Today's YouTube.
Nice post that I really need to take advantage of on how to de-clutter.
Holy crap... looking through the worklog on HardForums and found the worklog for Project: Galaxy 4.0, including this post with pictures. Look at all those SATA drives. Can't find in the thread what size they are, but 30 x (the potential of) 750G = 22TB. Wow. Wish I had that disposable income :)
Links to pictures of 8 strange computer cases from drinking to Star Wars.
Sweet New Transformers posters. Not to hip with the Megatron one, love the Optimus Prime though!
Since the new Apple TV is all the rage the last few days with people hacking them and all, Gizmodo has a Apples and Oranges Hands-On: Apple TV vs. TiVo Series3 HD. Obviously for people in the "Apple Lifestyle" one will work better than for people in the "Tivo Lifestyle". Same as xBox / Media Center extender will work for people who are Windows/xBox people. Anyway, it's an interesting comparison if for nothing less than comparing how the two companies have done their user interfaces (I do love the comparison of remotes and the obvious targetted audience for each :)
George Ou posts about Wireless LAN security myths that won’t die. A nice breakdown of what'll get you the most bang for the buck.
Via one of the photoblogs I read, an introduction to visual thinking, posted mostly so I remember to read it when I get home.
12 ways to pimp your office. I so want that aquarium desk!
Excellent post on Daring Fireball entitled Deal With It and looks at some of the stuff you deal with every day in terms of UI. IE: 4 steps to send an IM to someone, 10 to send an email message. Interesting read.
I point out this post from Robert McLaws not so much because I've heard of the problem it's fixing, but as a note that the next time someone complains that "well, in Linux if you have to fix something you end up having to type cryptic commands into a scary black window", point them to it and contemplate on
icacls favorites /setintegritylevel (OI)(CI)low
Suddenly "apt-get dist-upgrade" or "umount /dev/hdd" doesn't seem so bad :)
An amusing "interactive" teaser trailer for Battlefield: Bad Company what appears to be next in line for the Battlefield series from EA. Thanks to Darren again.
The video of The Oribi Gorge has some serious pucker factor. Thanks Darren.
Lifehacker has a good article on a subject dear to my heart, taming your cables and powercords. The Cordless workspace redux has some tips and equipment on how to get your desk area a bit cleaner. I'm using the wire tray myself, which works not badly, it at least moves the masses of cables up off the floor), though it's not 100%. I think I'll look for the long power strip this weekend and see if that makes things a bit easier.
Be sure to add the other article on the same subject.
Found some good links on RAID setup and options. In essence it says that RAID-5 (which this server is built on) isn't the way to go, and RAID1 is way better (even though you lose disk space). I'm now having to re-think my new desktop install dangit!
Links are:
Too scared for the "Herd" releases? Well, Ubuntu 7.04 Beta has now been officially released. Hopefully they've fixed the "root on raid / mdadm bug" that bit me when I was playing with Herd4 and Herd5. If not, it's a known bug and I'm sure it'll be released before the official release sometime in April. Now I have something to play with this weekend!
Funny read on the Battlestar Galactica Watercooler with some Reader Theories: Zarek’s a Cylon. Or Roslin’s a Cylon.. No spoilers, just interesting theories for the BSG geeks out there.
Supercool! How productive could you be with a Smart Mirror? I seem to remember seeing something like this in minority report or I, Robot or something. Still, nifty.
Found on planet gnome is a howto on Creating An Automated Staging Server using CVS.
It’s easy to create an automated staging server for content that doesn’t need to be compiled (like most web content.) The trick is that CVS has a very flexible logging system. All you need to do is have your CVS server send an email on each check in and have the staging server take that email and check out the files that changed.
Details follow in the link.
The second Mac vs PC vs Linux is up at the bottom of the original post. I like this one much better, feels far less forced to me.
Saw a note (via digg) about an article on Linux MCE. Uhmm.... Why hasn't someone told me about this? Where did it come from? Auto-dims your lights (if you have a home automation system of course), can send a control application to bluetooth mobile phones, turns on your TV and receiver and sets the right inputs? Scans all networked computers for shared media? Cover-flow like browsing? Where the hell did this come from?
And is it free? Huh? Really? From Linuxmce.com:
LinuxMCE is a free, open source add-on to Ubuntu including a 10' UI, complete whole-house media solution with pvr + distributed media, and the most advanced smarthome solution available. It is stable, easy to use, and requires no knowledge of Linux and only basic computer skills.
The video is a bit smarmy in it's comparison of LinuxMCE to Windows MCE though, something that the Linux Community has to work on. However, if the features they advertise work as... uhm.... advertised. I've had discussions with a buddy of mine on MythTV vs Windows MCE and MCE definately came out on top. I use MythTV and prefer it, but it's setup vs WinMCE make it far more usable to normal people (and even geeks). However, if LinuxMCE (which integrates MythTV) this works like they say, I'll be replacing my MythTV Box with this ASAP.
Anyone else know about this of have any experience in it?
Oh, and LinuxMCE also integrates Asterisk (the free phone system), provides network boot to easily put up other LinuxMCE systems in the home, and it seems like the list goes on and on...
Sorry for the rambling, but this is really exciting!
Update: OK, a bit more digging through the website has enlightened me a bit more. LinuxMCE is a project where the software is given away for free, but the commercial side of it is selling you consulting and a $1,000-$7,000 setup with varying levels complete home automation. So basically you can put it together yourself, get the right hardware, get the right bluetooth module yourself, etc etc, or pay someone to give you an out of the box plug and play solution. Looks like the software given away is 100% complete though, so if you can set it up and get the right hardware, you can make it work as advertised. I'm not 100% sure, but it looks like you might need two computers, a "core" and a "orbiter", where the latter is a non-hard drive, network boot device only that is what is connected to your AV equipment and is controlled by the core. Maybe, I'm not sure exactly if the "hybrid" setup is everything on one computer or everything on two...
The project is a fork of pluto home apparently.
Lifehacker has a niced list of the Top 10 Greasemonkey scripts to improve your productivity. Some good stuff in there, especially number 10, a feature I'd love to see moved to all email clients :)
Neat step-by-step look at creating a logo from the designers perspective.
Speaking of logos, I really need to update the look of this page (for those of you without RSS).
Nice HOWTO from the Ubuntu community on running seamless windows XP under Linux. Not your standard "associate .exes with wine" though, this is about how to use QEmu. Check it out at Windows X PUnder Qemu HowTo.
Via Digg comes Toys that should not exist. What were they thinking!
You need a reason? If you think you do, check out Twenty Reasons to Have Sex When You Don’t Feel Like It.
"Don't feel like it"? Huh? What language is this written in?
:)
Slashdot announced that TrueCrypt 4.3 was Released. Fun new features are 32/64 bit Vista support, ability to load it onto mp3 players, and auto-dismount in addition to the fun stuff like hidden volumes, plausible deniability, "traveler mode", and other fun stuff. Check it out at http://www.truecrypt.org/
The IE Blog announced the IE Add-ons Contest Winners a couple of days, and I have to take a moment to bitch about this, even though the first few comments on the site echo my thoughts.
First thing is that the first criteria is:
Creativity: Creative and innovative application.
Fair enough. I applaud Microsoft for engaging the community, encouraging innovation and doing something different. However, lets take a look at the winning entries:
So basically the first three prizes, equaling a trip and $3k cash were won by re-creating features available on a competing browser. Huh?
Do the authors of the plugins deserve credit for the work they did? Yes. Are these features needed in IE7? Definately! That's why they were created no doubt. Do they deserve to win the top three prizes in a contest where innovation is the first criteria? Uhmm.... I don't know about that. Oh, and some of the winning plugins (not those top three though) are for pay as well (but I guess that follows the Microsoft philosophy).
Just when I just think that I am understanding Microsoft, they confuse me again.
Anyone else have any thoughts / opinions on this? Am I mindlessly bitching here?
Reverend Ted has a nice look at Mac vs. PC: How Would Linux Fit, looking at the position and the "mac vs pc" campaign from Apple. They also present their first spoof ad (here) presenting the Linux vs Mac vs PC concept to turn things a bit on their head. Not bad, but a bit.... "forced" somehow. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Regardless, it's nice to see Novell putting the word out there.
Heros Director/Producer Greg Beeman has updated with BLOG QUESTIONS - WEEK 2. Lost more good stuff!
Lifehacker takes on a comparison of two of the major disk encryption systems available and puts them in a bloodthirsty cage match. OK, maybe not quite.... however, the OS Encryption Showdown: Vista's BitLocker vs. Mac's FileVault is a good primer as to what's available and the up and downsides. Read the article to see who wins!
I'm disappointed that Linux doesn't have an offering here. Actually, I'm disappointed Linux doesn't have a user friendly offering here. Linux has had disk encryption for a while now, it just hasn't had the friendly frontend that OS/X and Vista have put on it, and instead make the user resort to typing in cryptic commands like dd and cryptsetup and dealing with terms like 'loop-AES' and 'LUKS'.
Via Darren, my morning time-sink... ay And Silent Bob Strike Back: The F*cking Short Version. This is why Kevin Smith is a f*cking genius!
Caution, video may contain just a couple (*cough*) of naughty words :)
According to some Apple WWDC details including the agenda, which will focus a large amount of attention to Leopard. Can't wait to see what's there! Now I need to wait another 3 months (at least) before looking at macbooks :)
Thrown up on reddit.com as The best unedited fight sequence ever. Read the blurb on YouTube about how and why. Or just watch Tony Jaa (remember Ong Bak?) kick complete and total ass for four minutes. Great way to perk up your Tuesday morning!
The good mate Oneiros pointed me to the Pirates of the Caribbean - At World's End Trailer over at AICN. OOooooh! Firefly is giggling madly at the Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom-ness :)
I think a project like Linux Personas quite well defines the term "passive aggressive". Basically they group Linux users into broad categories (experimenter, follower, application, geek, transitioner) to help "better understand the marketing opportunities". Then they provide stats like sales cycle length, potential revenue, etc.
There's even a funky screening tool (with well worded questions akin to "do you like linux, or do you care about your IT infrastructure" to let you determine if you should attempt a sale to them.
I so wish I could say that ironically the server that runs the site is Linux, but no, sadly it's W2k3.... I guess they won't make that mistake twice :)
Nifty link to a list of cool ads. Especially like the car with the pressed ham about a quarter of the way down the page. Gotta get me one of those for my car! :)
Ars has a nice look at the latest version of Beryl, the latest in Linux desktop eye candy.
Most Interesting Pictures Of Seb Przd - very MC Escher-esque.
SWEEPTHELEG.COM, a music video of the original Karate Kid movie. Found via Digg.
Clip: First Penny Arcade Game Footage. Cool. Glad there was no voice acting though :) Glad to see the juicer got in as well!
A nice comparison of the "300" movie to comics. I saw this movie last night and can't wait to see it again.... in a word "gorgeous". The look, the colors, the action sequences, the choreography.... just amazing. You could also tell the story was ripped right out of the pages of the comic book (as shown in the link).
Go see it. Now.
Nice (and quick) wrap up of the Top 10 best Linux DVD ripping and encoding software.
WTF has a scary story about a really bad (and dangerous, and expensive) production failure. My worst? Probably doing an SQL import with some bad characters which resulted in the update of an entire site of content being replaced with one page (ie: something like update pages set content = 'xxx' where id = x;, except that somewhere in the 'xxx' there was a ";" which caused the entire site to be updated). A database restore lost a days worth of design work from the other person working on the project. Luckily a) the site wasn't in production yet and b) the designer had all the pages he had worked on saved and on his desktop so he just needed to cut/paste his work back in.
I too sleep soundly knowing my code doesn't control pouring giant vats of molten metal :)
Saw on digg that Beryl 0.2.0 was Released. Check out this comment for some of the new plugins and additions. Nice to see that some of them are not just plain old eyecandy, but actual productivity / workflow improvements.
Wh00t! Finally at 15:30 PST the GNOME 2.18 Desktop & Developer Platform was released to the world. Let the recompiling begin!
The release notes is of course the page to start looking at things. A quick glance makes it look like this isn't a really exciting release. Some tweaks I'm sure, updated apps (evince now deals with multi monitor better, addition of the power manager, tomboy now in the official release), but nothing groundbreaking. I'll install it myself in the next few days and see if I should be disappointed or not. Regardless, congrats to all those who worked hard on this project!
Forever Geek points to a great featurette on the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle movie.
Funny air traffic controllers quotes (allegedly real):
From an unknown aircraft waiting in a very long takeoff queue: "I'm f...ing bored!"
Ground Traffic Control: "Last aircraft transmitting, identify yourself immediately!"
Unknown aircraft: "I said I was f...ing bored, not f...ing stupid!"
Old probably and still funny to revisit.
Yup, it's 3/14, or as geeks would know, Pi Day! Remember to celebrate at 1:59 today k?
Here's the Official site.
Nice article on how to Parallelize applications for faster Linux booting. This deals with the chunk of time after the kernel boots and while the system is starting up. Goes through alternate startup script systems, benchmarking and the actual Linux init process.
Better Light Introduces 416-megapixel Scanning Back. Not much to say here..... other than "Ugh". Quick specs:
Oddly enough I don't think that the 20-30mp backs are that much cheaper.... 419 though, wow. Though according to my calculator it's 138.72 mp. Still, way more than I need right now for my galleries of cat pictures...
More cool questions on Beeman's Blog about the spring hiatus. Great inside info not so much on the storyline as the mechanics of it all.
I had a good laugh when I looked at the license plate of Mr. Nakamura's car (episode 14). I like those little jokes. Did you place it deliberately or was it just someone from the equipment staff having fun?Believe it or not, none of the writers, directors or production team planned that. It was the idea of one of our prop people – a great, hard working guy named James Clark.
Someone dug up the alcohol entries in the Guinness Book of World Records:
The strongest known beer in 1979 was EKU Kulminator Urtyp Hell from Kilmbach, West Germany, at 13.2 percent alcohol (1979).
Amusing comment on Zork in the article on the ten most important games.
Remember back in the day when Windows 95 wasn't out yet, OS/2 had just come out and it was going to rule the world? The "Team OS/2" weirdos were out there evangelizing and life was good? Back before the dark times.... back before the empire? </obi-wan>. Anyway, via OSNews here's a trip down memory lane with a OS/2 2.1 tutorial. Cute pics...
Possibly not safe for the weak of stomach.... a fark discussion link has a long list of images of scary facial / head / body tattoos.
The Comic Reel has a good write up on our meeting with Linderman in the last episode of Heroes ("Parasite"). Also reveals the title and air time of the next episode.
“.07%,” the first of the final five episode of “Heroes’” first year, is scheduled to air on April 23rd on NBC.
Cool, Digg pointed to Five Spore Vids Show Entire Evolution.
Man I can't wait for this game!
Little Big Planet - GDC 07 On Stage Demonstration. Very cool demo of PS3 technology / gameplay / game design / graphics / physics.
Here's an Animated Stereogram to make your eyes go crossed this weekend. Hint, it's not a boat (or a yacht :)
Wh00t! Live CDs of GNOME 2.18 are available in bootable CD, vmware, qemu and virtual server flavors.
Two New Amazing Crysis Videos available... "wow". The first one looks a bit like the old trailer at the beginning, but has lots of new stuff. Second one is pretty interesting too, talking about some of the new features added to the engine. Can't wait for it to be available!
Fedora v. Ubuntu: A Performance Look is a benchmark of games and various operations comparing fedora core 6 and 7 and ubuntu 6.10 and 7.04 (stable and unstable version of each main distro). Interesting, however the benchmarks are really close. I think the widest gap is 5 seconds difference in LAME compilation time and maybe 5 FPS running Enemy Territory. Wonder what that says.... Interesting also to see things like boot time differences.
The article also references a 64 vs 32 bit benchmarks article which is an interesting read.
Darren sends this reminder as to why The IT Crowd is so frickin' hilarious.
Pentaxlife points to the new lens roadmap for all you pentax (D)SLR users out there. Exciting for me is the 60-250/F4 and nthe 200/F2.8. Interested also in the differences in quality and size between the DA16-45/F4 (which I have now) and the upcoming DA* 16-50/F2.8 (probably really expensive though.
Sad though there still isn't an "all around" walk around lens of 20-150 or so. Breaking it up at 45-60 (67-90 @ 35mm) is just a bit too close to a range that you'd use all the time. Of course, my dream lens of 10-300/F1.4 in a pancake profile is probably still a ways off :)
And now to distract you from a far too early morning.... cute kittens.
You're welcome!
No people, regardless of what you have read on digg and reddit google maps can't zoom in this far... at least not everywhere. In fact, it can only zoom in on a few areas that are covered by the national geographic projects that have their (small) strips of photos overlaid. It's cool, but there are only a few. Check Google Earth for them (they appear as the little airplane icons over Africa).
Some pics of Venom from spiderman 3 over here. Don't click if you want to be totally surprised... doesn't look like there are that many spoilers though, just the look of Venom.
Lifehacker points to a free ebook called Learn Ubuntu Linux.
Apparently during Heroes last night (not for me though) there was a new Spiderman 3 trailer. If you missed it fear not, you can get it on the Spider-Man 3 HD on NBC site. ThanksForever Geek (nice new design btw!).
Sweet find from Darren. 300 Seconds of 300. Low res, youtube quality, but still cool to see!
I went to the page entitled A Hundred Couples Having Sex In One Room wondering what the double entendre (or reverse double entendre) was. Well, apparently there is none. Caution, NSFW due to boobies and other pixelated girlie bits.
Ah, I love the crazy Japaneses!
Very amusing page on One thing PC users can do that Mac users can't...
The Cat Page has surfaced again, in another form. Similar to I can has cheezburger, yet different (equally cute :) This is due to the bandwidth issues that the original location had.
Wow.... I love lego, but not this much. Whoever made this has some serious block skillz.
Very funny.... video of the NWA song censored in real time. Hard to describe, and very well executed.
A very cool set of advertising images. Some of these I've seen before (the bag with the picture of a bikini bottom on it for example), but there are a lot of new ones.
Photo / graphics geeks take note.... PopPhoto has confirmed that Adobe Adobe has Confirmed March 27 CS3 Release.
If you are a BSG fan and watched last nights episode you might want to read this thread on the SCI FI Forums. If you haven't, don't read it, not even the title. Serious spoilers. Funny quote (again, only for those who want spoilers or who have seen the episode) after the jump.
Apollo: Kara...?
Starbuck: Lee....you must go to the Dagobah system.
Apollo: Karrraaaaa....
The beautiful and awesome Kethryvis posted Take #1 of white and nerdy, with Donny Osmond. Frickin' hilarious!
Silly, but still funny.
Man, that guy is stupid," I thought to myself. I ALWAYS smile nicely and wave in a sheepish manner whenever a female does anything to me in traffic, and here's why...
On DanWebb.net is The No Shit Guide To Supporting OpenID In Your Applications. The title says it all. No shit :)
Nice collection of Analytics packages on the Cheap for web devs.
Everyone now.... awwwwwwwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Be sure to click on the pics to get higher res versions.
Cool article called Never fall in love with your code. Because it's crap.
It made me think seriously about all the code I'd written since that time. Is it all crap?
Anyone following the in-production-for-ages game "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." will be happy to know it's gone gold.
Gnome 2.18 RC1 got released recently.... check out the TwoPointSeventeen wiki page and the release notes.
The Inquirer has a look at a program that allows you to crack Vista activation by brute force.
The method of attack has got to be quite troubling for MS on many grounds. The crack is a glorified guesser, and with the speed of modern PCs and the number of outstanding keys, the 25-digit serials are within range. The biggest problem for MS? If this gets widespread, and I hope it will, people will start activating legit keys that are owned by other people.
I'm not sure how I feel about this... on one hand I'm a cheap bastard and admit that part of my not upgrading to Vista (which is attractive to me for some reason, though the love is fading with the various horror stories surfacing with nVidia driver issues, performance being bogged down by antivirus, etc) is due to it being harder to get a "clean" pirate version where it doesn't expire, WGA works, etc. MS did a fairly good job of protecting it, though there are some timer / clock hacks around (invalidated as soon as you run an update of course). On the other hand, if/when I shell out my $100 for a legit copy of Vista, and I get told I'm a stinking dirty pirate because someone's brute force hack has grabbed my activation key, I'd be pissed off, even if it is solved with a simple phone call.
If this starts happening in force do you think that...
Robert send me a link to these Amazing Art Illusions - Optical Illusions. Some of them I didn't get until I took a second look, sometimes a harder look, other times I had to look at the images from the side to "get" them.
Forever Geek noticed a New Fantastic Four Spot. I have to admit I'm getting a bit excited about this one as well.
Apple Gazette Presents: Create your own Rumor. Mine is:
"One of our spies has given us this exclusive news about a ultra portable macbook pro and wifi enabled appletv in the second quarter 2007".
Sounds good to me!
